Many different types of computer programs allow a user to request data, and in response, return results that have links to additional information. For instance, when a web browsing application allows a user to browse a wide area network (such as the Internet) and follow hyperlinks When the user clicks on a hyperlink, the browser loads the page or document associated with that hyperlink so that it can be viewed by the user.
Search engine applications allow a user to search for information by inputting a query as a series of keywords. The search engine then searches one or more different data stores for documents, webpages, or other results that correspond to the keywords. The search engine often returns, on a results page, a list of hyperlinks that link to the underlying result documents. The underlying result documents can be webpages, word processing documents, or other types of underlying documents. Again, when the user clicks on one of those links on the results page, the search engine downloads the underlying document so that it can be viewed, or operated on, by the user.
Other types of programs do similar things as well. For instance, enterprise resources planning (ERP) and customer relations management (CRM) applications allow users to search for and manipulate business data. By way of example, a user can specify search parameters to identify certain kinds of customers that have certain sales tendencies during certain times of the year. These parameters are used by the ERP/CRM system to search for customer account entities or records that satisfy the search criteria. A list of those account entities is often returned to the user, by way of hyperlinks or other reporting, and the user can click on hyperlinks or portions of the report to get further detail, or to look at other aspects of the search results. When the user clicks on one of the hyperlinks, or selects a portion of data for more detailed viewing, the ERP/CRM program downloads those records and displays them to the user so that the user can view or operate on those records as well.
In each of these scenarios, it can happen that it takes the program an undesirably long time to download a selected results document. For instance, when the user is presented with a list of hyperlinks to underlying documents, and the user clicks on one of those hyperlinks, it can take the program an undesirable amount of time to download the underlying document so that it can be viewed and operated on by the user. This can have a negative impact on user experience. It is likely that a user who needs to wait longer encounters frustration, and a user experience that is less pleasant, than a user who does not need to wait a long time for the underlying source document to download.
In addition, if the user spends a relatively large amount of time performing these types of operations, the waiting times for source documents to download can accumulate quickly and result in a significant waste of time. For instance, such wait times can accumulate to hundreds of minutes per month. In those cases, instead of being exposed to the underlying documents (or to related advertisements generated by the program) the user is often in an idle state, simply waiting for the underlying data to be downloaded. Neither the user nor the company that provides the program and its corresponding hyperlinks benefit from such a situation. This problem can be greatly exacerbated in certain regional territories where high speed network service is unavailable.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.